I guess the answer would be “just because,” but it just doesn’t seem the right one.
When I was a little kid in the early-70s, Room 222 and he godawful Love, American Style were on forever (well, four or five seasons each is forever when you’re 7, 8, 9, 10, etc.).
Hardly a soul under 40 has heard of the things. They were pretty big in their day, as I recall.
Where are they? There are a hundred others, I’m sure. Are they just too locked into their times, too into the issues of the day?
Now, I don’t have five hundred channels, so they may be shown regularly on some theme network, for all I know. I’m just saying that I’ve never seen them on the general run-of-the-mill independant stations like so many others from that era.
Room 222 wasn’t directly based on Up the Down Staircase, and that type of “inspiring teacher” film has a very long history (there was also To Sir With Love, which at least had the interacial angle, plus later films Dangerous Minds, Stand and Deliver and Mr. Holland’s Opus.).
It was the integration angle of Room 222 that was its big hook. That also explains why it’s not in syndication: it was too much of it’s time, and the problems of dealing with an integrated school are not all that innovative now (or, at least, they are very different these days than they were in the early 70s).
Love American Style was probably hurt due to its format: a handful of short episodes each hour. Hour-long comedies do not do well in syndication, and it is difficult to fit ten- and twenty-minute segments into a half hour. The same sort of thing hurt the syndication of The Carol Burnett Show.
Shows that date badly generally are not syndicated nowadays. Something like Julia, for instance, was an important part of TV history, but what was so innovative back then (a competent and intelligent Black woman) is pretty much expected today.
Also, shows with continuing plotlines are harder to syndicate than single episode shows.
One of the reasons that Law&Order is such a great show for syndication show is that you don’t have to know what happened last episode or anything about the recurring characters (other than which ones are the cops and which ones are the lawyers, and you can usually figure that out).
The longest-running syndicated television shows have a timeless quality in their storylines (i.e., not insanely topical) in that they can easily be understood and still be enjoyed decades from when the show originally aired. It helps tremendously if there is not a ongoing storyline from episode to episode.
Most hourlong dramas usually do not pass this standard, which is why few are broadcast ten years after they’ve gone off the air. The best comedies have a shelf life thirty years or more beyond their original broadcast dates. Most comedies don’t hold up that well.
In the 500 channel universe of today there’s a lot more opportunities for new shows and new material, and the advent of reality TV means that scripted prgramming isn’t necessarily the only way to fill broadcast hours.
I recall that some local station showed reruns of Room 222 in the wee hours some years ago. I liked the show in its first run, and since I was working a night shift at the time, I would catch a few of the rerun episodes when I got home from work.
It had not aged well. Seeing the early-70s fashions on the kids, listening to them talk (“Groovy!” “Far out!” etc.), and hearing the discussion of then-relevant issues (something like, “Did you hear? The new kid doesn’t think Negroes should come to the dance”) somehow just didn’t translate into the 90s. It’s been many years since I last saw Love, American Style, but I would imagine that the same would apply. (And what am I imagining? Lines like, “Hey groovy chick–wanna get it on with a swingin’ bachelor Scorpio tonight?”)
I think this would be the problem with a lot of sitcoms. Some things keep on working in syndication–comedies that are more slapstick (Lucy’s various incarnations or Gilligan’s Island), or comedies that are dated to begin with (early episodes of Happy Days). But some just become dated and difficult to understand in today’s context. Room 222 would seem to me to be one of those.
In addition to the above, you’ll find that half hour comedies are much more common in local channel syndication than hour long shows. They’re just easier to fit into a schdule, especially one that revolves around half hour local news shows.
Look at how sitcoms are timed when they have special 1 hour episodes. They’re written with a clean break in the storyline at the half hour mark to make them more hospitable to syndication, because everyone involved knows that the money is in syndication, not primetime broadcasting. A show that can’t be show
Cable channels are more flexible, in that they don’t have primetime, sports, and local news to schedule around, which is why you see hour long fiction shows there a lot more than on local channels.
When Law & Order had been on for only a short time, there was an article in the paper by one of the show’s writers. According to him, the show was originally designed so that the police investigation part would take just over half an hour with the trial part taking the remaining time. The reason was that hour-long shows were difficult to syndicate then, so this way each episode could be shown as two half-hour episodes, allowing time at the beginning of the second part for the recap.
Variety shows tend to be well-nigh impossible to syndicate: There can be issues of topicality, the music can 1) date and 2) be expensive to get permission to re-air, and, when edited down from a full hour to thirty minutes, they tend to get somewhat incomprehensible, which explains why the only people who appear to have aired Laugh-In (for one example) are Trio (and they air the full hour, which isn’t possible, for the most part, in syndication).